"Manoj Jain Award for Excellence in Human Values" for the a.y. 2017-18 are closed now. All students of B.Tech., B.Arch.(3rd Year), and 3rd year Integrated Dual degree (B.Tech.& M.Tech./M.Sc./MBA) courses of IIT, Roorkee will be eligible for this prestigious award. The nominations can be made for self, for a friend by faculty for an eligible student when open for 2018-19.

Objectives & Beliefs

Trust Objectives & Beliefs

To institute and confer the awards and trophies to promote human values, quest for acquisition of knowledge and to excel in the area of study, sports and social works.

To promote spread of modern as well as conventional education for the skill development of children, adults and senior citizens, including the underprivileged persons identified in any part of the country or in the jurisdiction so declared preferably with the help of the members or experts as deemed necessary by the Trust from time to time.

To promote such welfare and socio-economic activities as may be approved by the governing body of the Trust and in line with the policies of the Government of India.

To foster a spirit of mutual help and goodwill among the Citizens in general, and the members of Trust in particular, thereby, promoting initiatives of social importance by community efforts.

To undertake all such other lawful acts, deeds or things including Sports and Cultural activities as are incidental or conducive to the attainment of any or all of the above objectives and undertake to set up and operate the required facilities.

To promote the awareness of a green environment amongst the educated as well as uneducated for longevity of mother earth including the environment around us.

To enrich the life and ensure the general social and economic well-being of the citizens inter-alia by bringing the benefits of science and technology to rural reaches preferably with the help of the members.

The Theory of Value Contents and Structure

The Nature of ValuesWhen we think of our values we think of what is important to us in life. Each of us holds numerous values (e.g., achievement, security, benevolence) with varying degrees of importance. A particular value may be very important to one person but unimportant to another. The value theory (Schwartz, 1992, 2005a) adopts a conception of values that specifies six main features that are implicit in the writings of many theorists:

(1) Values are beliefs linked inextricably to affect. When values are activated, they become infused with feeling. People for whom independence is an important value become aroused if their independence is threatened, despair when they are helpless to protect it, and are happy when they can enjoy it.

(2) Values refer to desirable goals that motivate action. People for whom social order, justice, and helpfulness are important values are motivated to pursue these goals.

(3) Values transcend specific actions and situations. Obedience and honesty, for example, are values that may be relevant at work or in school, in sports, business, and politics, with family, friends, or strangers. This feature distinguishes values from narrower concepts like norms and attitudes that usually refer to specific actions, objects, or situations.

(4) Values serve as standards or criteria. Values guide the selection or evaluation of actions, policies, people, and events. People decide what is good or bad, justified or illegitimate, worth doing or avoiding, based on possible consequences for their cherished values. But the impact of values in everyday decisions is rarely conscious. Values enter awareness when the actions or judgments one is considering have conflicting implications for different values one cherishes.

(5) Values are ordered by importance relative to one another. People’s values form an ordered system of value priorities that characterize them as individuals. Do they attribute more importance to achievement or justice, to novelty or tradition? This hierarchical feature also distinguishes values from norms and attitudes.

(6) The relative importance of multiple values guides action. Any attitude or behaviour typically has implications for more than one value. For example, attending church might express and promote tradition, conformity, and security values at the expense of hedonism and stimulation values. The trade-off among relevant, competing values is what guides attitudes and behaviours (Schwartz, 1992, 1996). Values contribute to action to the extent that they are relevant in the context (hence likely to be activated) and important to the actor.

The above are features of all values. What distinguishes one value from another is the type of goal or motivation that the value expresses. The values theory defines ten broad values according to the motivation that underlies each of them. Presumably, these values encompass the range of motivationally distinct values recognized across cultures. According to the theory, these values are likely to be universal because they are grounded in one or more of three universal requirements of human existence with which they help to cope. These requirements are: needs of individuals as biological organisms, requisites of coordinated social interaction, and survival and welfare needs of groups.

Individuals cannot cope successfully with these requirements of human existence on their own. Rather, people must articulate appropriate goals to cope with them, communicate with others about them, and gain cooperation in their pursuit. Values are the socially desirable concepts used to represent these goals mentally and the vocabulary used to express them in social interaction. From an evolutionary viewpoint (Buss, 1986), these goals and the values that express them have crucial survival significance.

Note: This article is part of papers published by Schwartz, 1992, 2005a.